Phillip Noyce has got a few projects currently cluttering up his to-do list, from Mary Queen Of Scots (starring Scarlett Johansson), to American Pastoral and Dirt Music. And today he added another fresh flick to the pile.
The Australian director is in talks with DreamWorks to direct The Art Of Making Money, a true-life tale which revolves around Art Williams, the alias of a Chicago-based counterfeiter who used state-of-the-art techniques to produce over $10 million of fake money in a seven-year period. In fact, he continued to do so even after being caught by the FBI.
Williams was sentenced last year to seven years in prison but, America being America, that hasn’t stopped him cashing in (real money this time) on his story. He’s currently under contract to write a book based on his life, which will be written with Rolling Stone scribe Jason Kersten, whose 2005 profile of Williams first brought his story to Hollywood’s attention.
Frank Baldwin (no relation to Alec, Stephen, Daniel, William, Adam or even Mike) will write the screenplay, with Brian Robbins attached to produce.
The Art Of Making Money sounds a little like Catch Me If You Can to us, but we’re sure that Noyce – one of the best directors around, who’s been knocking them out of the park for a while now – can find the right nuances to set the two projects apart.